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Sunday, 25 February 2018

Germany's "historically unique experiment"

Yascha Mounk is a German in his mid-30s who is a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard and describes himself on his website as "one of the world's leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism". Talking recently in an interview with German TV about the threat to democracy posed by populists he said populists thrive for three reasons. The first is economic stagnation and the third is the internet, which allows extreme politicians to be heard. The second reason is this:

"We are in a historically unique experiment. There is no example in history of a democracy founded on mono-ethnicity and transformed into a liberal multi-ethnic democracy. We are halfway, but certainly not arrived yet and have to feel in the dark."

He added that he was a strong believer in the experiment. The interviewer did not pick up on this statement.Dr. Mounk went on to explain that being German had nothing to do with biology but to do with values.

"Anyone who lives here, contributes, and abides by the rules is part of this nation. To be a true German in quotes, nobody needs to have a particular skin color, provenance or religion. That would be against the principles of our political system."

All people who live in Germany are German (presumably whether they are in fact German or foreigners) if they subscribe to common values, the values of liberal democracy.

A German who has lived abroad for a long time does not count as German by this definition, but probably I am being pedantic. Thinking that Germans are less German if they are not ethnic Germans (biodeutsch) means not sharing those German values, so such people, paradoxically, are perhaps not German. On the other hand, Dr. Mounk conceded that if the voters do not go that far, but merely oppose further immigration, that is a position that is permissible in a liberal democracy, although he thinks they are making a mistake. Such voters are still Germans.Which is a fair enough point of view, I suppose, except for one thing, the elephant in the drawing room. Surely in a liberal democracy, where the people rule, the people should be encouraged to debate exhaustively and vote on the 'huge experiment to transform a democracy founded on mono-ethnicity into a liberal multi-ethnic democracy'. Instead no-one in politics has mentioned it to the Germans, and no party offers an alternative to the policy of letting in lots of immigrants and refugees, except the AfD of whom Dr. Mounk very strongly disapproves. They, who are offering the demos a democratic choice, he calls a threat to democracy. He says that the internet helps populists and "extreme politicians" (defined as such by their desire to limit or stop immigration, even though he says that this position is compatible with Germany's values) to reach a wide audience.

He should welcome this increased freedom of expression, because this surely is a liberal democratic value. But he does not. I don't think for him rule by the people is the central democratic value. I think it frightens him, in fact.Lack of discussion on the matter is a basic contravention of the values of democracy. Nothing, after all, is more fundamental to a democracy than deciding how the demos itself will be constituted. But people who try to discuss the principle of continuing to let non Europeans settle in Germany are sternly discouraged, lose friends and are even sometimes prosecuted.

Actually this is not completely true. An obscure German Green Party politician called Dr. Stefanie von Berg discussed it for a moment when she told the Hamburg parliament in 2015:

"Our society will change. Our society will change radically. In 20-30 years there will no longer be a German majority. We will live in a supercultural society. This is what we will have in the future. And I want to make it very clear, especially to right-wingers: This is a good thing!"

Regrettably, she did not go on to explain why it was a good thing..

Five years earlier, in October 2010, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said something very different. She did not mention the huge experiment but told a meeting of her party's youth wing that the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily side by side did not work. She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society.

"This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.'

Presumably she didn't mean it or perhaps she meant that German culture should be wide enough to embrace all cultures so long as people adhere to liberal democratic values. What else does being German mean?I wonder what the future holds for Germany or for Europe. The future, as we know, belongs to those who show up. Dr. Mounk talked about an historically unique experiment. Something which is also historically unique, and part of the reason for the experiment, is the widespread Western phenomenon of rich nations with sharply declining birth rates. I suppose someone has to replace the ethnic Germans, since they aren't making enough of them any more. Let's hope the people who do so share liberal democratic values.

Only Southern and Eastern Europe have any spirit left. Everywhere west of Poland and north of the Alps is dead.

Poland is probably doomed, given that the Catholic Church is now quite openly an enemy of European civilisation. They're going to be caught between the secular globalism of the New World Order and the warm and fuzzy feelgood globalism of the Catholic Church.

Thanks to the Catholic Church in fifty years time there won't be any Catholic European countries.

Regarding your recent post on Buczacz, and the accurate observation that minorities are very much attracted to ethnicly destabilizing forces, Yascha Mounk seems to have felt the same frustration of being a minority, although in a more convoluted way. Understandably he is fighting to change that, but the question is, although a highly regarded scholar, and undoubtedly very gifted, can his opinion be anything else than a minority opinion? Indeed an experiment that keeps repeating: can the meta-story be changed by the intelligentsia?I found this NY times article which points to the unsolved tensions of being a minority: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/books/how-yascha-mounk-grew-up-a-stranger-in-my-own-country.html

"Understandably he is fighting to change that, but the question is, although a highly regarded scholar, and undoubtedly very gifted, can his opinion be anything else than a minority opinion? Indeed an experiment that keeps repeating: can the meta-story be changed by the intelligentsia?"

If your co-ethnics control the sense organs and voicebox of a society (the mass media) then your tiny minority position is artifically amplified and can eventually become the majority position. If your tribe also dominates law schools, humanities departments, finance and Hollywood then you'll have the wind in your sails.

The majority view can be blackened out of existence through social pressure, controlled-media conformity, speech codes and criminal law. The Frankfurt School advocated for this through "repressive tolerance" and championing gays and racial minorities. Set women against men with feminism. Promote loose sex. This leads to worse and smaller families. Fewer men of character who can resist. Drench the people in sex talk, porn, in masturbation talk and they'll forget about politics. Overall it's worked very well. Hold down the people long enough until open borders turns the former majority into a minority and you have removed the threat.

He propagates the present, trendy gender ideology and thinks it is half-way implemented already? Oh boy, come and live in Eastern Germany - we're still so old-school out here - even in East Berlin. That's not going to change that quickly. Not even Merkel recognized the German mentality I think. Kohl sensed and represented it so much better. Christoph

"Yascha Mounk is a German in his mid-30s who is a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard and describes himself."

Talk about elephant in the drawing room. Perhaps Mounk, as a member of a highly cohesive minority group, has an interest in the breakdown of the group cohesiveness of the German majority? In a divided land, the most cohesive group will rule. For a small group to dominate a larger one, you bring in a third party, preferably complete with grievances plus media-generated hostility.

"He should welcome this increased freedom of expression, because this surely is a liberal democratic value."

Freedom of speech is not a Jewish value though. The last 100 years of history show that Jews value tight censorship.